Dorothy “Dot” Greenbaum and Rafaela “Ralfie” Santopietro have been together for years, but as they age, their stable lives begin to show cracks. Ralfie can’t navigate the stairs in their home after a debilitating knee replacement and Dot’s heart condition throws into question the viability of their careers, their housing, and their relationship. In their late sixties with no kids to lean on, the two women must come to terms with unforeseen questions of identity, love, and family.
 
Dot is caring but hides hurtful secrets. Ralfie’s gruffness masks the physical and emotional pain she endures. Friends and relatives don’t necessarily offer appealing role models for their third act. Dot’s sister Susan is pushing them toward a stuffy “55 or better” community out in the ’burbs, populated by aging straights who mistake the butch Ralfie for a frumpy old man. Eighty-year-old Viola—Dot’s friend and sometime lover—lives alone and refuses help, even as she experiences a devastating fall. Rife with Hoffman’s characteristic wit, Dot & Ralfie takes a hard, sometimes painful look at elder care in the LGBTQ+ community, and the unique struggles that come with getting older outside of heteronormative structures.

Amy Hoffman is the author of the novel The Off Season and the memoirs Lies about My Family, An Army of Ex-Lovers, and Hospital Time. Formerly the editor in chief of Women’s Review of Books, she currently teaches writing at Emerson College and in the Solstice Low-Residency MFA Program. Her writing has appeared in the Boston Review, the Gay & Lesbian Review, and other publications.

Contents

1 There’s Ralfie
2 So There’s Dot
3 The Only Thing to Live For
4 Not a Good Time
5 An Expedition
6 A Big Waste of Time
7 Who Knows Where
8 Ralfie on the Job
9 The Weight Slams Down
10 Oxygen
11 All Sorts of New Vocabulary
12 Ralfie Feels Desperate
13 The Characteristic Housing
14 A Person of Strong Character
15 It Doesn’t End There
16 Silence
17 Dot Drags Herself
18 The Particular Quiet of the Closed Library
19 Ralfie Falls Out of a Tree
20 There’s Ralfie. Again.
21 Viola Calls
22 Dot Does Her Duties
23 Ralfie Gets a Bad Feeling
24 “What?”
25 A Call to Susan
26 Ralfie at the Bank
27 They Still Can’t Believe
28 Asking Viola
29 Her Breakfast Egg
30 Unresolvable Life Crises
31 A Cold, Rainy Sunday
32 A Few Stray Magenta Highlights
33 A Favor for Jim’s Mom
34 Susan Tries Again
35 Alone and Confused
36 Distressing Visits
37 Jim Is Wary
38 The Tran Family at the Door
39 An Item
40 Ralfie Does Not Insist
41 Expedition #2
42 Recuperating
43 A Big Honking Piece of Machinery
44 When They Were Kids
45 Finished
46 The Ducky

Acknowledgments